But getA returns an STM Int, so I still have to do a :
doSomethingWithA = do a' <- (getA mySTM) case a' of 1 -> doStuff 0 -> doSomethingElse
This doesn't really save me a lot of boilerplate. What is the best way of writing a function that just returns my values do I can work with them in the STM monad without unpacking them all the time?
You can't; that is the whole point. However, there are ways to save some typing. For example, you could use (>>=), which the do-notation desugars to anyway: doSomethingWithA = getA mySTM >>= \a' -> case a' of ... In this case, that doesn't actually save that much, I guess. But you could go much further. For example, if you often find yourself doing case analysis on the value of a, you could write something like caseA :: STM e -> STM e -> STM e caseA act1 act2 = do a' <- (getA mySTM) case a' of 1 -> act1 0 -> act2 Then you could just write 'caseA doStuff doSomethingElse'. And if you wanted something more general than just matching on 1 or 0, you could write (say) caseA' :: [(Int, STM e)] -> STM e And so on. The trick is to abstract out the common patterns in your code. Haskell is really good at this---if you find yourself typing the same boilerplate over and over again, there's (often) a way to abstract out the commonality. -Brent